A Picnic with the Natives: Aboriginal-European Relations in the

As Europeans began arriving in the Australian Northern Territory, meetings of locals and intruders were at first cautious, nervous, but generally cordial. Distant officials urged liberality and restraint upon the colonizers, but made no acknowledgement of Aboriginal rights. Uneasy peace ended with the coming of the pastoralists. Individual cases of mutual goodwill are documented, but from the chasm of misunderstanding between cultures and the clash of territorial interests grew hostility and bloodshed and a steady weakening of official resolve. Using colonists' written records, Gordon Reid has created a revealing picture, always with an eye to detail. The chilling phrase used as the book's title is just such a detail. It was tossed off in a letter to a friend from the head of the northern Territory's police force, in ironic reference to an impending act of bloody police retribution. Individual cases of mutual goodwill are documented, but from the chasm of misunderstanding between cultures and the clash of territorial interests grew hostility and bloodshed and a steady weakening of official resolve.